European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker made some bold statement about the future of 5G in his State of the Union 2016 speech.

Fudzilla mentioned the speech yesterday where the bosses of EU promise “all European households” to will have a minimum internet download speed of 100Mbps+ by 2025, with businesses and the public sector being told to expect 1Gbps+.

2020 seems to be the magical date. Until then, each EU member state must offer commercial 5G in at least one major city. This means that the 5G trials, as Fudzilla reported, are set to start by 2018 at the latest. The 3GPP still needs to finalize the final specification and until 5G arrives, speeds of the 4G Advanced will get to 1000 Mbps (1Gbps) probably as early as 2017 and things will get even faster rather sooner.

Jean-Claude also mentioned that by 2025 all cities and transport links in the EU should have uninterrupted 5G coverage. From where we stand now, 2025 seems a long way off, but covering all cities and transport links seems like a bold statement.

The European Commission has already voted for the death of roaming charges for consumers set for 15 June 2017. This means that a person from Greece will be able to use her or his phone free of charge in every other country in EU, let’s pick Germany, France, Hungary, Croatia or Lithuania. We chose some random countries, as we cannot list all 28 member states.

The only thing that slightly scares us is the fact that the Commission has been entrusted by the co-legislators to lay down detailed rules on the application of fair use policies and on the sustainability derogation by December 2016. There will be some kind of limitation, as fair use usually means that customers get some kind of limitation. T-Mobile unlimited 4G is capped at 27GB a month, before it slows down. We do agree that 27GB sounds like a lot but bear in mind that Netflix needs 7 GB per hour for UHD (Ultra High Definition also known as 4K). Watching one of The Lord of the Rings movies in 4K would almost burn your monthly allowance.

The European Commission unveiled the European Electronic Communications Code and promises “forward-looking and simplified” rules to make 5G more attractive to investors.

The 3G and 4G licensing was one painful and expensive process and it is highly likely that 5G licensing and spectrum as a part of the usual 800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2800 MHz and a few others you will see 3600 – 3800 for shared small cells, and at least a few others, that will likely need to be paid for and regulated.

Getting 5G to all cities and transport links won’t be cheap either. The EC estimates that the companies will need to invest some 500 billion Euro over the next decade. That is a lot of money.

The European Commission would like to see every local authority offering Wi-Fi in and around public buildings, health centers, parks and town squares. The public voucher scheme has an initial budget of €120 million.

The goal is that all schools, universities, research centers, transport hubs, as well as providers of public services, should have access to speeds of 1 Gb/s, download and upload, by 2025. France for Fudzilla reported(Fiber To The Home) technology with speeds up to 500 Mbps download and 200 Mbps download and charges €36.99. Sweden has 500-1000 Mbps download and 50-100 Mbs for 899 Swedish Kuna’s or some 94 Euro a month. Germany has 400 Mbits download and 40 Mbps upload for 64,99 € and the list goes on.

The future of communication is bright within Europe, as things are apparently going to get much faster.

A report from Price Waterhouse Coopers Taiwan has warned firms with subsidiaries in Britain could well face being stung for extra tax after the European country completes its divorce from the European Union.

According to the Taipei Times, there are 11 of the top Taiwanese countries that have subsidiaries in the UK and PWC has warned that they should seriously consider expanding their business in the UK.

Most of these 11 companies are in the electronics business while none of them are in the financial services sector.

Many of the Taiwanese companies use the UK as a bridgehead to do business with other EU countries but not only face higher taxes but also may face swingeing import duties after Britain exits the union.

PWC calculates that Taiwanese companies invested as much as US$2.94 billion in May although the UK invested close to US$8 billion in the Taiwanese IT powerhouse.

Google has told EU antitrust regulators' that it is jolly unfair that they are considering a hefty fine against the search outfit and they should consider other penalties.

Nothing was suggested, but Google might be thinking that the anti-trust regulators should take it for a coffee somewhere and look sternly at it during some part of the conversation. Maybe the regulator should raise an eyebrow or something, but nothing stronger than that.

The reason Google thinks it should be let off is because of the unusual nature of the case and its willingness to settle the case with concessions last year.In its reply to the European Commission's April charge sheet, the world's most popular search engine also faulted regulators for not taking into account the fact that it was offering a free search service.

The company's robust defines came after the Commission accused it of distorting search results to favour its shopping service, harming both rivals and users, following a five-year investigation.

The Commission's charge sheet, called a statement of objections, said it "would set the fine at a level sufficient to ensure deterrence" if Google was found guilty. Based on its 2014 turnover, this could be as much as $6.6 billion.

Google said: "Imposing a fine in the present case would be inappropriate. The novelty of the statement of objections' theory, the selection of the case for commitment negotiation and Google's good faith participating in these negotiations militate against the imposition of a fine."

Poor Google appears to think that it can growl agressively and European Regulators will run away, just like the American ones do. However the EU anti-trust authories has some pretty impressive scalps in its collection, including Microsoft and Intel. If it gets Google, it has pretty much a collector's set to show off at the anti-trust watchdog annual rump sniffing convention.

A new EU Commission survey shows that European ISPs don't deliver on the download speeds they advertise. While the US ISPs are a little more honest, the Europeans are cheaper and faster.

The new studies of broadband Internet access across Europe and the U.S. published by the European Commission so that European broadband Internet access providers advertised download speeds of 47.9 Mbps, but only delivered 38.19 Mbps. US providers delivered more or less what they advertised.

Operators using DSL, which accounts for seven out of 10 broadband connections in Europe, exaggerated the most, delivering only 63.3 percent of the advertised download speed. In the U.S., DSL operators delivered 92 percent of what they promised. Cable operators in Europe delivered 86.5 percent of the advertised speed, and fibre operators 83 percent.

The study looked at ISPs' performance in 2013 and 2014, and found that while download speeds were growing, their noses were also growing as their claims were getting wilder. Only with fibre technology were the engineers able to keep up with marketing departments claims.

However despite having less honest ISPs, Europe they all offered a better service than what could be found in the US. The services delivered in Europe are faster and, in many cases, cheaper, than in the Land of the Free.

At 8.27 Mbps, the average European DSL line was just ahead of the U.S. at 7.67 Mbps. Fibre speeds in Europe averaged 66.57 Mbps, compared to 41.35 Mbps. Europe's cable operators delivered the fastest performance of all, averaging 66.57 Mbps, comfortably ahead of the US with its 25.48 Mbps.

The EU researchers found that the cheapest available services in the 30-100 Mbps range were between 21 percent and 38 percent cheaper in the EU than in the US. The best deals on services promising over 100 Mbps were between 13 and 34 percent cheaper in the EU than in the US.

From next April, European ISPs will have to be more open about the minimum, normally available and maximum speeds they can expect, and make it easier for customers to cancel their contracts if those speeds are not delivered under European Commission rules.

Europe's top antitrust watchdog is mulling over an investigation against the European Union's five biggest telecommunication companies for possible anticompetitive collusion against potential competitors including Apple and Google.

The Commission has sent out questionnaires wanting information on meetings between Vodafone, France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica could have amounted to collusion. The GSMA, a trade body that represents telecommunications operators, has also been quizzed.

This fact finding is normally the first stage of a formal investigation. The five first met in October 2010 and apparently discussed strategy and standardisation issues.

It was nicknamed the E5 and was concerned about growing competition from new messaging technologies from Apple and Google. The group says that lawyers were present at all meetings and that minutes were sent to the Commission.

This indicates that the E5 knew they were sailing dangerously close to something the antitrust regulators would not like and did not want to end up like an Italian cruise liner piloted by a bloke from Naples, who is seeing a nice blonde crew member for drinks.

The EU wants Internet users to grass up any web content they believe might incite terrorism, under new counter-terrorism proposals put forward in Europe.

The ‘flagging’ mechanism is one of a number of initiatives proposed by a group of European Government officials participating in the ‘Clean IT Project’. The ‘Clean IT Project’, funded by the European Commission’s ‘Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme’, aims to bring together European Governments and the internet industry to find mutually-agreeable solutions to stop the use of the internet by terrorists.

The working group has now published a draft manifesto of initiatives to put forward to private sector stakeholders for comment. The big idea is that citizens, ISPs, web hosts, search engines and other private sector organisations should more actively participate in the law enforcement process. ISPs will offer users easy to use flagging systems,” the draft plan proposed.

The EU says that Apple's cunning plan to remove competition by patent trollage is almost as bad as Samsung's defence.

EU antitrust chief, Joaquin Almunia has requested details on the companies' patents earlier this month to determine if they're being used to compete by unfairly preventing others from using standard technology. "Standardization and IP rights are two instruments that, in this new IT sector, can be used as a tool to abuse," Almunia said.

But the chief made it clear that Apple and Samsung present only one case where IP rights can restrict competition. While the Commission hasn't yet done anything more than request information, eliciting that sort of statement from its antitrust chief will make Apple and Samsung shiver a bit.

Apple should be particularly worried. Steve Jobs publicly said that he wanted to declare “thermonuclear war” on Google for creating Android and spoiling his iPhone party. Any EU anti-trust action might see Samsung as having to act defensively against Apple agression.

EU Justice Commissioner Vivian Reding has confirmed that she would move to legislate the “right to be forgotten” into European Law Speaking to the European parliament, Ms Reding said that a US-based social network company(i.e. Facebook) that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules.

Facebook and other social networks will need to make stringent data privacy settings the default position for users, and to give them control over their own information, she said. People shall have the right to withdraw their consent to data processing and the burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process the personal data, she said.

National privacy bodies, such as Britain's Information Commissioner, will get powers to examine and potentially prosecute companies. Under the new legislation, users could sue websites for invading their privacy. They would have a right to be entirely “forgotten” online.